Consensus-based intelligent group decision-making model for the selection of advanced technology

Consensus forming is a critical process in the present day computer assisted group decision-making (GDM) scenario. Most of the GDM problems are of strategic dimensions and get complicated due to their multi-criteria framework involving many subjective and quantitative factors. In this research, a technology selection problem has been considered for a manufacturing company. The problem has been modeled into a multi-person, multi-criteria and multi-preference scenario. Various preference modes have been transformed into Fuzzy Preference Relations. A soft consensus based group decision-making under linguistic assessments has been adopted here to eliminate the role of a moderator. To incorporate the offline/online characteristics in the re-evaluation phase of the discussion, a multi-agent system (MAS) based negotiation model is proposed to resolve a technology selection problem. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.